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Comment by zozin | Hacker News Reader

This, like AMP, looks like a blatant attempt by Google to lock in users/advertisers into the Google ecosystem. If you're going to leverage your monopoly to harm end users, then the time for lax government regulations is over.

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Google needs to be stripped of its ad business. They need to lose Chrome and Android. They can't embrace, extend, extinguish the Internet. They're seriously harming the web with Chrome, AMP, and other initiatives.

Apple needs to be strictly hardware or software. They can't continue to run an exclusive app store and tax 30%. When you buy the device, it's yours. You should be able to upgrade and change the software.

Facebook can't be allowed to acquire any more social media companies. They need to be mandated to provide account data export, and they can't create shadow profiles without consent.

Amazon can't be allowed to compete with its sellers. Every act of espionage needs to be confirmed and awarded $100M or more. Out of all the companies, their behavior is the most gut-wrenchingly evil and steps on the upstarts.

Call your representatives and demand this.

Microsoft, surprisingly, is acting like a trillion dollar company that isn't run like a monopoly. Their tools and ecosystem play nice with others.

What is the consistent set of rules here?

The status quo is you must raise prices for consumers to be antitrust. Can you think of a more socially positive alternative? The status quo is not to find economically positive outcomes because that is (1) incommensurable with policy enforced by law always and generally (2) likely unknowable.

Google raised its prices multiple times, you just have to stop evaluating prices in fiat currency. Google provides services in exchange for your personal data. So each time they take more data, they raised the price.

Merging DoubleClick data with Google accounts was a huge price hike. Starting to store your web and app activity centrally, was a price hike. Mining your Gmail receipts to populate a "purchases" tab in your account? Price hike. Auto-logging your Chrome in when you logged into Gmail, holy price hikes, Batman. You get the idea.

You right away jump into something unknowable like the exchange rate of “data” and “fiat currency,” in exactly the kind of economic positivist framework (really crypto anarchist jargon) that is incommensurable with policy.

Like obviously the price of doing Google searches and visiting YouTube is zero so I don’t know, even if I accept your premise at face value anything exchange for zero is possible interpreted as a zero or undefined exchange rate.

I think cryptocurrency is stupid but I thought "fiat" was still a good term to use here. Data absolutely has value, and both Congress and these companies know that and consider it uncontroversially true.

>Call your representatives and demand this.

I don't agree with any of your capricious rules, so no, I don't think I will.

I wonder if you got downvoted mainly for not thinking Microsoft deserves scrutiny. Honestly every giant corporation should be under intense anti-trust scrutiny at all ties. We should have a "default anti-trust" state that kicks in when corporations reach a sufficient size perhaps. (such as being large enough to influence the government)

I think Microsoft is evading scrutiny right now because while they do everything the others do, they are the less big player in every market. And often easier to get around. Nobody's worried about Edge's dominance with Chrome around, who even cares about the 30% cut the Windows Store can take?

However, when the laws get revised and new precedent is set, many rule changes will blow back on Microsoft just as well as everyone else.

Let's dive into this. But first, we need to update the anti-competitive rules so we have a general theory that makes sense. The current rules allow for non-competitive behavior as long as you have low prices which are good for consumers. That's why Amazon is safe. The hole is that this doesn't protect against predatory pricing where you kill all competitors and then can charge anything.

Google is certainly a problem. I'm not personally against divesting chrome and amp and some others. But I can see people disagreeing.

Apple's DNA is that by combining hardware and software, they make high quality products. Don't kill the magic. The tax on the ecosystem seems usurious. The app store could be a target for some action imo.

I probably disagree the least with your ideas on FB.

I doubt strongly that Amazon systematically uses espionage to steal good ideas. It's such a monster that it's bound to start a product similar to what they were informed about. And maybe a rogue employee here and there, but I doubt this is a big problem. They have a million other issues, but I don't think you hit the nail on the head.

These are just my personal take. Strong opinion, weakly held.

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with Chrome and Amp?

Chrome and Amp are Google lock-in web killers.

Google is pushing ahead in the browser space, ignoring standards committees. They're doing things that deepen their moat.

Google made choices in HTML5 to make it less semantic, ensuring their search engine wins.

Google is trying to remove the URL bar, which makes Google homepage and AOL-like keywords the dominant way to access information. It lowers awareness of brands and websites as 3rd party entities.

AMP hosts content on Google's servers. You never actually access the original publisher's website. Guess how you get higher search rankings?

I should compile a list sometime. It's actually quite astonishing how much they're eroding the commons to entrench themselves.

If you look at something like an AmazonBasics wall mount monitor arm, and compare it to an Ergotron, you'll notice every single part is the exact same shape. AmazonBasics products often seem like someone ran the well-known product through a 3D scanner and then started printing replicas with the Amazon logo on them.

It is proposed via the web infrastructure community group in the W3c, and I've seen interest from the big four browsers. I don't believe it is anything like AMP.

That doesn't necessarily mean they're not co-opted.

Then say they’ve been corrupted and name the corrupt members so the discussion can continue past vague implication.

If you are interested in the context and generally unfamiliar with the W3C, maybe these articles will help:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/amid-unprecedented-con...

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/w3c_sells_out_web_eme...

I would prefer to err on the side of caution when looking at the actions of key strategic pieces of large corporations.

The burden of proof for not being corrupted lies with the people and organizations that wield tremendous power.

We can't just have blind faith and wait for proof of corruption first. Instead we should assume it, and look for proof that there isn't any and be thankful when that's the case.

Normal folks: Keep the above post in mind next time you see an post thats overly cynical. This is the logic that the top minds of HN use to come to their viewpoints.

Between the whole HTML5 / XHTML2 thing (which they lost to WHATWG) and the fact that they're a pack of sellouts (the Encrypted Media Extensions debacle), I would not trust a single thing coming out of the W3C. If Trust Tokens are of any use then it should be handed over to WHATWG (which is where I understand it should be anyway given it's an API thing).

Which is not to say I'm fond of advertising tracking like this by any means, I hate it, but if we're going to have it foisted on us by Google et. al. then it should at least be managed by a more competent group than the W3C.

This hits hard and true.

In what way are the browser vendors that would participate in this in the W3C different than the browser vendors that would participate in this at WHATWG?

I don't see how that will be better. WHATWG are basically Google and Apple as it stands. Used to be them plus Mozilla and Microsoft but Firefox is at ~5% market share while MS have forked Chromium. So it won't make any difference whether it is WHATWG or W3C except with the latter the companies can at least claim they're promoting an established standards body, so it's better optics.

> To apply for an Issuer (and its key commitments) to be included within Chrome, the Issuer’s operator must file a new bug on the Chromium Issue Tracker, and provide...

The implementation within Chrome isn't a community thing that anyone can make use of. They are controlling who can use this feature. That is vendor lock in.

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